Spy on us ? Why, that would indicate some amount of distrust. Why would the government distrust us? They are here to serve us, and our opinions are really important to them - we event vote for them for crying out loud. I sure know my vote counts, I see it all the time. Every big decision the government makes (you know, healthcare, civil liberties, where/when we go to war), a vote is called and we only do if the majority are game. I mean, this is a democracy, right? That's what we do. America - full of proud citizens whose relationship with their government is forged with a mutual respect and understanding.
I've always wanted to know how to predict the future myself. So far, it's been a huge failure for me. I've bought all these crystal balls, hired some company rhyming with schmalantir... maybe they can find the right mix. After they do, imma get so rich in the stock market! Booyah!
Yeah... I bought a couple in the past.... I think the last one was "Private Security and the Law". The problem is they usually have a few pearls of wisdom but you have to sift through hundreds of pages to get them out. Never again - it's TED/JREF/small easily digestible presentations for me.
We don't use code reviews here. In fact, we barely introduce new features (only if we really have to, which is sometimes in the span of a decade).
We simply dominate certain segments of the market. We found it is not only cheaper, but more predictable to use our market position to influence other companies and sometimes governments to keep our favorable position. In fact, we often times will announce features but never even implement them! What's crazy, is that shit works - well! Our stock goes up every time because our consumers and shareholders love us so damn much!
As a software company, we would like to proudly announce to the world that a solid understanding of how to manipulate to market, your employees, and public perception at large is far more effective then code review, features, ability, or even competence in general. You should learn something from us, spending so much time on trite details like these.
Well, it depends on the way the VOIP is transmitted actually. If you don't mind encoding sections of speech and doing an eventual delivery, then latency doesn't matter. For example, most gaming services utilize the method of sending snippets of voice that are fenced by silence using this mechanism.
Now, if you are talking RTP vis a vis SIP where it's truly realtime, 20ms timeslices with stateless compression like G.729 then yes - you will be chopped to pieces with a non-constant time latency (i.e. jitter) medium like open air. That's why wireless voice standards are so specialized, like DECT. It's impossible to pull off realtime when you have jitter - all you can do is mask the jitter by filling it in with predictive audio (or whitenoise/repeated audio in the naive implementation).
So what intellectual property is this about? I couldn't find it in TFA.
What is "Intellectual Property", anyways? I'm pretty sure that was term that was made up by those who hold lots of patents and copyrights - which are two things that are radically different. It's funny how capitalism relies on an open market, yet every business wants to monopolize ideas.
I seriously doubt it. ANd if it does, my bet is that it will fail within 2 years.
I work in an organization where my department is all Linux, and the rest of the company is Windows XP or 7. Moving to Office 365 for me has been a benefit, actually, because with the exception of Lync I can access all the web versions of the apps using Iceweasel/Firefox in my linux machine. As far as Apple goes, I hear there is a web version of Lync you can use because Apple can run Silverlight. So, if like me you are all FOSS, the only thing you are missing out on is Lync.
Well, the specific package we have allows for us to download the Office 2010 native apps, which I'm not doing here of course. Maybe that's what the requirements are for. As far as functionality goes, I can create and edit all the MS formats, and the Outlook interface has all the features of the desktop version AFAICT, so I wouldn't take the requirements as a non-starter.
There are some fundamental problems with this - the biggest of which is you can't use it unless you already have Office on your desktop. How did they not learn from this mistake the first time around?
Just FYI, you don't need any local software installed, in fact you don't even need windows. I have it open in a browser on my Debian laptop right now, Slashdot in another tab.
We adopted MSFT's big-brand business suite, SharePoint 2010, several months before it launched last May. It took a full 6 months to set up the environment, plus additional time to make it even remotely useful for the enterprise. The level of in-house expertise and infrastructure needed to make a business run on MSFT products (Outlook, SharePoint, etc) is obscene.
And it's quickly becoming outdated, sorry MSFT.
At another business (I switched, thankfully!), we use Google Enterprise. The level of support we need to provide for e-mail and document collaboration is radically lower and feels fundamentally different. Instead of FIGHTING with our systems to keep them online, we can innovate and develop new and cool things because our time doesn't disappear into the black hole of "Correlation ID errors" and arcane Outlook glitches.
MSFT, I hope you learn what it means to provide cloud services, and do provide a worthy competitor to Google and other providers! Then, we'd have some exciting innovation! In the meantime, pah... sorry guys. I know you work VERY hard. But PLEASE tell Ballmer to step aside so you can do something that isn't designed by the Corporate Committee!
We had the same experience with Sharepoint. We embraced it wholly, too, amidst the shitstorm of try to get to work right. When we finally got fed up with weekly expensive calls back to Redmond, we got sucker punched when we discovered the back end database structure is an opaque nightmare and Sharepoint was essentially holding our data hostage. We won't touch sharepoint again, and I have heard similar experiences from other companies in my area.
Depending on the size of your company and it's organizational complexity, it's nice to have a local file server that you can manage with AD security groups. It also makes deployment of AV software and managing workstations much more manageable once they're joined to an AD domain as well. Don't discount a local MS infrastructure entirely. It still has its uses.
It's funny actually. The biggest reason it's being considered is because the CEO wants us to explore it. He has been spanked so hard by MS in the past 15 years over licensing, activations, upgrading, IT spending enormous time on Sharepoint problems, etc that it's more like "my linux servers cost me less money than my MS ones, lets get rid of as many MS servers as possible". As much as I love free software and linux (that's all I use personally), the idea of moving away completely from an AD where I can enforce policies on the windows workstations and push out software does frighten me a bit. We basically just want to leave our options open.
Does it have the horrible ribbon thing that the newer versions of Office have? If so, I think it will have a hard time catching on (I tried that "See How it Works" link on their site but they wanted me to install Silverlight). No one I know took OOo or Symphony seriously until MS came out with the ribbon interface. It was at that point they felt the need to see what type of competition was out there.
The web app versions of Word and Excel look very similar to their desktop counterparts, including the damn ribbon.
The rich version of Outlook does not for whatever reason.
What is it adding over Google apps in your case? It seems to me that if you want to reliably migrate away from MS infrastructure that would be more of a step in the right direction, wouldn't it? Won't your marketing people miss man of the top end features of powerpoint in any case?
Well, we did try out google apps. I like it, but I got overruled:)
The main complaints with google apps -
No Lync
No web app versions of Word, Excel, etc ( I'll admit, I like having this option, since I cannot install them and sometimes OO/LO doesn't cut it)
My main complaints against 365 -
Google apps is cheaper, and accomplishes most everything we did before with a local Exchange deployment
It's Microsoft
People might start putting data into the lockbox that is Sharepoint. It's a nightmare migrating data out of there, and we had been down that road before.
Also, it IS possible to remove synced users. You run a tool buried in the folder structure of the sync utility, set a flag in the registry for the tool to do a full sync, and have it sync with an empty OU. Works like a champ.
and have been for the last two months. I use linux on my desktop, it's nice to be able to have access to the web apps, since I can't very well install the software. Also, the big thing you need to consider when deploying this -
If you use the migration tool and link your AD accounts with Office365, you cannot ever get rid of your local AD because you won't be able to manage your users. We chose to export each user to a PST, and import their PST's into their new Office365 account now that we are one step closer to dumping our expensive and bloated local MS infrastructure.
Slashdot Mirror
Spying on Americans is our business!
Spy on us ? Why, that would indicate some amount of distrust. Why would the government distrust us? They are here to serve us, and our opinions are really important to them - we event vote for them for crying out loud. I sure know my vote counts, I see it all the time. Every big decision the government makes (you know, healthcare, civil liberties, where/when we go to war), a vote is called and we only do if the majority are game. I mean, this is a democracy, right? That's what we do. America - full of proud citizens whose relationship with their government is forged with a mutual respect and understanding.
Subset == Set? Someone tell the P == NP people, we have a breakthrough going on here!
I've always wanted to know how to predict the future myself. So far, it's been a huge failure for me. I've bought all these crystal balls, hired some company rhyming with schmalantir... maybe they can find the right mix. After they do, imma get so rich in the stock market! Booyah!
Yeah... I bought a couple in the past.... I think the last one was "Private Security and the Law". The problem is they usually have a few pearls of wisdom but you have to sift through hundreds of pages to get them out. Never again - it's TED/JREF/small easily digestible presentations for me.
We don't use code reviews here. In fact, we barely introduce new features (only if we really have to, which is sometimes in the span of a decade).
We simply dominate certain segments of the market. We found it is not only cheaper, but more predictable to use our market position to influence other companies and sometimes governments to keep our favorable position. In fact, we often times will announce features but never even implement them! What's crazy, is that shit works - well! Our stock goes up every time because our consumers and shareholders love us so damn much!
As a software company, we would like to proudly announce to the world that a solid understanding of how to manipulate to market, your employees, and public perception at large is far more effective then code review, features, ability, or even competence in general. You should learn something from us, spending so much time on trite details like these.
Basically what I mean is if you have information/time and the time is non-constant, you have to make the information non-constant as well.
Well, it depends on the way the VOIP is transmitted actually. If you don't mind encoding sections of speech and doing an eventual delivery, then latency doesn't matter. For example, most gaming services utilize the method of sending snippets of voice that are fenced by silence using this mechanism.
Now, if you are talking RTP vis a vis SIP where it's truly realtime, 20ms timeslices with stateless compression like G.729 then yes - you will be chopped to pieces with a non-constant time latency (i.e. jitter) medium like open air. That's why wireless voice standards are so specialized, like DECT. It's impossible to pull off realtime when you have jitter - all you can do is mask the jitter by filling it in with predictive audio (or whitenoise/repeated audio in the naive implementation).
So what intellectual property is this about? I couldn't find it in TFA.
What is "Intellectual Property", anyways? I'm pretty sure that was term that was made up by those who hold lots of patents and copyrights - which are two things that are radically different. It's funny how capitalism relies on an open market, yet every business wants to monopolize ideas.
If you RTFA, this appears to be guerilla marketing on part of a certain company that rhymes with schmalantir...
The state wants money without doing anything in exchange for it.
Isn't that called rent seeking?
Of outage? Looking closely at google apps...
I heard that will be a new feature when Cairo is finished :P
I seriously doubt it. ANd if it does, my bet is that it will fail within 2 years.
I work in an organization where my department is all Linux, and the rest of the company is Windows XP or 7. Moving to Office 365 for me has been a benefit, actually, because with the exception of Lync I can access all the web versions of the apps using Iceweasel/Firefox in my linux machine. As far as Apple goes, I hear there is a web version of Lync you can use because Apple can run Silverlight. So, if like me you are all FOSS, the only thing you are missing out on is Lync.
Well, the specific package we have allows for us to download the Office 2010 native apps, which I'm not doing here of course. Maybe that's what the requirements are for. As far as functionality goes, I can create and edit all the MS formats, and the Outlook interface has all the features of the desktop version AFAICT, so I wouldn't take the requirements as a non-starter.
There are some fundamental problems with this - the biggest of which is you can't use it unless you already have Office on your desktop. How did they not learn from this mistake the first time around?
Just FYI, you don't need any local software installed, in fact you don't even need windows. I have it open in a browser on my Debian laptop right now, Slashdot in another tab.
Really? PSTs? The ginormous outlook files?
What would you use?
We adopted MSFT's big-brand business suite, SharePoint 2010, several months before it launched last May. It took a full 6 months to set up the environment, plus additional time to make it even remotely useful for the enterprise. The level of in-house expertise and infrastructure needed to make a business run on MSFT products (Outlook, SharePoint, etc) is obscene.
And it's quickly becoming outdated, sorry MSFT.
At another business (I switched, thankfully!), we use Google Enterprise. The level of support we need to provide for e-mail and document collaboration is radically lower and feels fundamentally different. Instead of FIGHTING with our systems to keep them online, we can innovate and develop new and cool things because our time doesn't disappear into the black hole of "Correlation ID errors" and arcane Outlook glitches.
MSFT, I hope you learn what it means to provide cloud services, and do provide a worthy competitor to Google and other providers! Then, we'd have some exciting innovation! In the meantime, pah... sorry guys. I know you work VERY hard. But PLEASE tell Ballmer to step aside so you can do something that isn't designed by the Corporate Committee!
We had the same experience with Sharepoint. We embraced it wholly, too, amidst the shitstorm of try to get to work right. When we finally got fed up with weekly expensive calls back to Redmond, we got sucker punched when we discovered the back end database structure is an opaque nightmare and Sharepoint was essentially holding our data hostage. We won't touch sharepoint again, and I have heard similar experiences from other companies in my area.
Depending on the size of your company and it's organizational complexity, it's nice to have a local file server that you can manage with AD security groups. It also makes deployment of AV software and managing workstations much more manageable once they're joined to an AD domain as well. Don't discount a local MS infrastructure entirely. It still has its uses.
It's funny actually. The biggest reason it's being considered is because the CEO wants us to explore it. He has been spanked so hard by MS in the past 15 years over licensing, activations, upgrading, IT spending enormous time on Sharepoint problems, etc that it's more like "my linux servers cost me less money than my MS ones, lets get rid of as many MS servers as possible". As much as I love free software and linux (that's all I use personally), the idea of moving away completely from an AD where I can enforce policies on the windows workstations and push out software does frighten me a bit. We basically just want to leave our options open.
Does it have the horrible ribbon thing that the newer versions of Office have? If so, I think it will have a hard time catching on (I tried that "See How it Works" link on their site but they wanted me to install Silverlight). No one I know took OOo or Symphony seriously until MS came out with the ribbon interface. It was at that point they felt the need to see what type of competition was out there.
The web app versions of Word and Excel look very similar to their desktop counterparts, including the damn ribbon. The rich version of Outlook does not for whatever reason.
Sorry that's a bit hard to read, I didn't know Slashdot would kill all my new lines.
What is it adding over Google apps in your case? It seems to me that if you want to reliably migrate away from MS infrastructure that would be more of a step in the right direction, wouldn't it? Won't your marketing people miss man of the top end features of powerpoint in any case?
Well, we did try out google apps. I like it, but I got overruled :)
The main complaints with google apps -
No Lync
No web app versions of Word, Excel, etc ( I'll admit, I like having this option, since I cannot install them and sometimes OO/LO doesn't cut it)
My main complaints against 365 -
Google apps is cheaper, and accomplishes most everything we did before with a local Exchange deployment
It's Microsoft
People might start putting data into the lockbox that is Sharepoint. It's a nightmare migrating data out of there, and we had been down that road before.
Also, it IS possible to remove synced users. You run a tool buried in the folder structure of the sync utility, set a flag in the registry for the tool to do a full sync, and have it sync with an empty OU. Works like a champ.
and have been for the last two months. I use linux on my desktop, it's nice to be able to have access to the web apps, since I can't very well install the software. Also, the big thing you need to consider when deploying this - If you use the migration tool and link your AD accounts with Office365, you cannot ever get rid of your local AD because you won't be able to manage your users. We chose to export each user to a PST, and import their PST's into their new Office365 account now that we are one step closer to dumping our expensive and bloated local MS infrastructure.
FYI, he is censoring his blog. I asked the same question there, and it's been magically erased.